Understanding company accounts (London)

LONDON - Examine the accounting procedures. Study the notes. Talk to people in the same business.

City University London
12 and 13 November – beginners course
26 and 27 November – advanced course
With Raj Bairoliya chartered accountant and senior managing director of FTI Forensic Accounting, part of FTI Consulting, Inc.

Cost for each two-day course
Full price- £300 (early bird discount – £270)
NUJ member – £225 (early bird discount – £200)
Or book for both and get a £100 discount of the total course fees (Full – £500, NUJ – £350)
Book before 20 October for the early bird discount.

beginners and advanced courses – book here

These courses are for practising journalists only

When the US hedge fund manager and ace “short seller”, Jim Chanos, spotted the black holes in Enron’s accounts he set in motion the exposure of the fraud that brought down the company.

More recently, in Britain, we have seen a number of companies reporting problems that had been hidden in plain sight in their accounts and we will be looking at some of these as case studies.

Understanding Company Accounts for Beginners
12 and 13 November

This two-day intensive course with one of Britain’s top forensic accountants Raj Bairoliya from FTI Forensic Accounting will show you how to understand company accounts and get beyond the corporate PR spin.
 The emphasis will be on teaching practical skills rather than a series of lectures.

The first day will cover the theory and explain how to understand the profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow statements plus those all important accounting policies such as revenue recognition – the key to unpicking many suspect accounts – and which notes to the accounts to focus on and why.

A simulated profit and loss account will be used to show the interaction between this and the balance sheet. The second day will give the opportunity to apply the knowledge from the first day to three case studies, where participants will work in small teams and identify pertinent issues. There will be plenty of opportunity for questions and discussion.

The objective of this course is to ensure that all participants feel comfortable with a set of accounts and know where and how to look for relevant information.

The only pre-requisites for this course are numeracy and an interest in financial matters as the theory will be taught on the first day and applied to real life examples on the second day.

At the end of the course you will not become as rich as Jim Chanos but you should be able to recognise a potential Enron or Connaught when you see one!

Understanding Company Accounts Advanced
26 and 27 November

The advanced course will build on the beginners’ course with the aim of making the participants comfortable with a listed company’s accounts (which typically can run to over a hundred pages).

If the participants have not attended the beginners’ or a similar course, then it is important that they are already familiar and comfortable with a basic set of accounts – the profit and loss account, balance sheet, cash flow statement and the ideas behind the notes to those accounts. Participants should be familiar with some accounting terms such as EPS, PE ratio, depreciation, earnings management, share options and factors that drive management to manipulate their results.

The weekend will be based around a series of increasingly complex, real case studies and will require working in small groups. For each case study, the groups will identify core issues of journalistic interest in those accounts, identify the story and discuss how to justify/confirm it from the evidence in the accounts.

To the extent possible, the objective of this course is to equip a relatively small number of participants to comfortably handle relatively complex financial material and to provide a structured approach for tackling such material. Therefore, participants will have an opportunity to suggest any particular topics they would like covered before the course starts.

This will not make you an accountant but should equip you, as a journalist, to ask the right questions and assess the answers.

Note: This course is NOT suitable for those who are not familiar with a basic set of accounts as this will not be covered.

comments from previous attendees

Thoroughly interesting, clear and informative.

Raj [Bairoliya] made accounts less daunting by speaking ‘normal’ English and translating the jargon.

Brought a rather dry topic to life and managed to sustain our interest and convey very useful skills.

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